The crowd laughed, which seemed to give Mariko confidence.
“When I’m on stage I’m usually playing someone else. It’s easy to play someone else, but I think everyone in AA has learned that it’s hard to play yourself. Scratch that, it’s hard to be yourself.
“I think that’s one reason I started drinking. When I was drunk it was easy to be someone else and not face my own feelings and problems. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and my father was a professor at Ohio State. If you look at my face, it’s easy to see that I don’t fit the mold of what you’d call your typical midwestern farm girl. I’m Japanese and for awhile I thought I was the only Japanese in Ohio. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who told me how good my English was when I was growing up, but I don’t speak Japanese, or any other foreign language, for that matter. It was just hard to be so different.
“That raised a lot of issues that I’m still working out, but I found that in the small world of a college town it was easier to be accepted if you drank like a fish. I guess it’s the same thing these days, and many of you in this room probably had your drinking problem start in high school or college, when drinking was cool and something everyone did.
“Maybe it was something everyone did, but when I did it I was different. I was an alcoholic, and no matter how many times I convinced myself that I could stop anytime I wanted, I found that I couldn’t, at least not without the help of AA.
“I got married right out of college. Naturally, to another alcoholic. At the time I didn’t know he was an alcoholic. I just thought he was a fun guy.
“Did I mention that my husband was a Caucasian? No? Well, most Japanese-Americans actually marry outside their race, so either we’re totally assimilated and not racially sensitive, or there’s something about other races that attracts us. Either way, in a few generations there may no longer be any pure Japanese-Americans, except for the new Japanese who come from Japan as immigrants.
“Well, I realize now that the fact that my ex-husband was Caucasian had a lot to do with me marrying him. The only Japanese boys I knew were nerdy foreign exchange students, so my image of Japanese men wasn’t good. I was so insecure in my own racial and personal identity that having a Caucasian husband was important to me. I just didn’t realize it at the time. I know I say that a lot, but it’s funny how much you do start to realize when you join AA and follow the program. It’s like you spend a good part of your life in a fog, and the discipline of the program forces you to penetrate the fog in an effort to see clearly.
“My husband was a lot of fun when I first met him. He got drunk. I got drunk. We got drunk together. When I was still at the stage where getting drunk was fun, it seemed like a great idea to marry Kurt. When I got to the point where the alcohol was starting to kill me, the getting drunk together ceased to be fun. When I tried to stop, it just added to the misery. He got defensive and abusive, and I got a little crazy. He started turning mean when he was drunk. I was going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to work on my drinking and also going to Al-Anon meetings because my spouse was a drunk. In the vernacular of AA that made me a double winner. Kurt hadn’t hit bottom, and I had. I knew that if I didn’t get my drinking under control I’d never get a chance to try acting. I had to get out.
“Now I’ve been sober for almost four years. When I was a drunk I had a job I hated, but which paid well. Now I’m a starving actress. When I was a drunk I had a marriage that I found meaningless, but it provided a comfortable and mindless kind of security. Now I have an unemployed boyfriend who I sometimes think is crazy, even though I’m madly in love with him. When I was a drunk it was important to me to have a husband who was a Caucasian. Now it’s almost an accident that my boyfriend is Japanese, and I frankly wouldn’t care what race he was. When I was a drunk I had a lot of unresolved issues about being Japanese in a white society, and although I at least now realize I have all these issues, they’re still not resolved. I mention all this to illustrate that when you get sober, your life doesn’t immediately become peaches and cream. And if it does, you may not like peaches and cream.”
She checked her watch. “Well, once I got started I ran way over the five minutes they wanted me to speak. Since this was my first time up here, they were trying to be easy on me and not give me too much time to fill. I guess they didn’t really know me. There’s a lot more I could say about myself and what AA has done for me, but I guess the one thing I want to leave you with is the message that a sober life is not always a life without struggle and problems, but it is a life worth living because you will find the courage to be yourself, instead of an alcohol-induced stranger. Thanks.”
Mariko walked through the audience and sat next to me. The crowd gave her enthusiastic applause, and I was surprised to feel that she was actually trembling when she sat down. I gave her a hug, and we settled in to listen to the next speaker.
On the way to my apartment after the meeting, we stopped and bought some ice cream as a kind of celebration. We ate banana splits and I told her about the meeting at the Paradise Vineyard that afternoon. Then I said, “Do you know you’re one of my heroes?”
Mariko seemed flustered. “What do you mean?”
“I admire the way you’ve reinvented yourself.”
“I’m sick. I have no choice if I want to live.”
“You have choices. You could stay the way you were. Most people do. Changing yourself is the hardest thing in the world. It takes courage. I wish I had the same courage.”
“You’ve never had a drinking problem.”
“Yeah, but I have life problems. Or maybe midlife problems. I haven’t been very active looking for a new programming job. I used to enjoy the work, but now I feel like I’m drifting. I wish I had the courage to just strike out and do what I want to.”
Mariko sighed. “I’m torn between encouraging you to get a programming job that will pay you a salary that will allow you to entertain me in a style better than Baskin-Robbins, or encouraging you to follow your dream. What is it you want to do?”
“That’s just the problem. I don’t know. That’s why I feel like I’m past forty and drifting.”
She put her hand on mine. It was slightly sticky from the ice cream. She smiled. “Well, we can drift along together. Remember, one day at a time.”
I checked my watch and said, “We can’t drift along too much tonight. We better finish up. I want to do some more work.”
“What?” Mariko said. “It’s almost midnight. What kind of work could you possibly be doing this late?”
“I’m going to go back and glean the field, to see if there’s something I’ve missed. I’m returning to the Paradise Vineyard and see if I can find the girl who was in Matsuda’s room.”
“Why do you want to see a bunch of floozies?”
“I don’t want to see the strippers,” I answered. “I want to see the stage manager.”
14
After dropping Mariko off at her apartment I drove downtown and pulled up to the back of the Paradise Vineyard. I didn’t have the gall to park in the no parking zone in the alley like Hansen, so I parked about half a block away. I checked my watch before leaving the car. It was twenty after twelve.
I went to the stage door entrance of the theater and walked in. As before, the door was unlocked and no one challenged me as I entered the theater. From the stage loud music was being projected to the audience, but backstage it had an oddly hollow sound to it.
I saw Yoshida standing in the wings, talking to a woman wearing a flowing white blouse and a short black skirt. Incongruously, the woman was holding an electric fan in one hand.
The music ended to a scattering of applause and a few whistles. The applause continued for a few minutes and died, then a bare-breasted woman wearing a G-string came off stage. In her hand she was clutching some blue satin cloth. The woman was Martinez, but if she recognized me she didn’t give any indication of it as she passed. In fact, she gave no indication that I was alive at all. I could have been a stage prop. So much for my animal magnetism.